


five + one hollstein iloveyou's

by untiltheveryend



Series: another daisy chain [3]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, cutesy angst, five + one, idontknow, iloveyou trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-26
Updated: 2014-11-26
Packaged: 2018-02-27 02:37:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2675780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untiltheveryend/pseuds/untiltheveryend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘You are such a sappy idiot.’</p><p>Carmilla hums. </p><p>The silence stretches, warm and dark.</p><p>And then Carmilla tucks her chin to her chest and says, ‘I’m in love with you.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	five + one hollstein iloveyou's

**Author's Note:**

> so after the poor excuse of a love decleration in the latest ep, I wrote this hot mess.
> 
> (no proofread, written in a single sitting, probably delerious.
> 
> I'm very sorry if this makes no sense at all.)
> 
> not mine, not mine at all

1.

Laura has a long standing tradition of sober New Year’s. Its one part a promise she once made to her Dad, one part superstition. And also, it’s kind of nice to remember what it is you were doing in the first moments of a new start. 

So she’s sober at a party full of very much not-sober people. She’s got her back against the wall, enjoying the atmosphere, keeping an eye on Danny just in case she falls off the table she’s climbed onto.

‘Hey.’ It’s a voice she thinks she could recognise anywhere, even when it’s thick and dark with alcohol.

‘Hey yourself,’ she smiles, turns to slip her arms around Carmilla’s waist.

Carmilla leans into her, nose gently pushing along her hairline. 

It’s sweet and warm, and Carmilla smells like apple juice and- rum? (Laura doesn’t ask.)

‘Can I tell you a secret?’ Carmilla asks, and Laura thinks that at some undefined point between sober and inebriated, Carmilla always finds a little bit of innocence.

‘Yeah, of course,’ she says.

‘Promise you won’t tell Laura,’ Carmilla mumbles, and Laura laughs.

‘Honey, I am Laura,’ she says patiently, tipping Carmilla’s face back to meet her eyes.

‘Oh.’ For a moment they just look at one another, a peaceful bubble in the surrounding noise of the party.

Carmilla leans in to press their temples together and whispers, ‘I love you.’

‘I love you too, you dork,’ Laura tells her, lips pursed in the smile she only smiles for Carmilla.

Carmilla hums, something low and sweet. She does that a lot, when she is tired or lost in her thoughts. Snatches of melodies that Laura never quite recognises.

It soothes her more than she cares to admit.

‘So what was the secret I’m not allowed to tell myself?’ 

Carmilla waves a hand in an arc that describes nothing at all.

‘I just told you it,’ she says.

Laura laughs again, tips her head back against the wall and smiles at Carmilla. 

‘That isn’t a secret,’ she chides softly.

‘Maybe it should be,’ Carmilla mumbles.

‘Maybe it shouldn’t.’ 

 

(Later, as they count down the last few seconds of the year, Laura makes herself a promise.

Whatever happens in the next year, she wants to end it the way she is ending this one.

Midnight comes, and the room they are standing in erupts with noise, and all Laura can _seehearfeel_ is Carmilla’s lips against her own. )

 

2.

Laura knows something is seriously wrong the moment she walks into their room. The air feels full, like after a thunderstorm. Carmilla’s back is towards her, and something in the set of her shoulders screams _wrong-wrong-wrong_.

‘Carm?’ she says, voice small.

Carmilla turns, and the first thing Laura notices is how red her eyes are. She looks like she’s been-

‘Are you _crying_? What’s wrong?’ 

‘I’m fine,’ Carmilla snaps, voice hard and tight. ‘I just have to- have to go. Right now.’

Which is when Laura sees Carmilla’s bag on her bed, notices that the usual array of clothes draped across the floor and furniture is unusually depleted.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I have to go, Laura.’

‘No, stop. Why do you have to go, you aren’t making any sense!’

Carmilla laughs, cold and gritty.

‘I did something bad,’ she pauses, squeezes her eyes shut. ‘Really bad. So I thought I’d just leave, save you the trouble of kicking me out.’ 

Her voice breaks on the last word, and Laura can’t think straight, all she knows is that Carmilla is picking up her bag with a look on her face like she is going to walk through the door and never come back and-

‘Hey.’ Laura grabs Carmilla’s arm. ‘You don’t get to decide if I hate you or not. Tell me what you did, Carm.’

For a moment they are both silent, Carmilla half turned towards the door. Then she sighs, and slings her bag back on the bed.

‘Danny came over- looking for you I guess,’ she starts, and her tone reminds Laura of the day Carmilla told her the story of her past. The thought doesn’t help calm her whirling stomach. 

‘We fought. I said some things- I said some stuff that I knew would hurt her. I lied to her, told her you’d said things that you never have.’

The ball of tension at the pit of Laura’s stomach inexplicably loosens. She isn’t sure what she was scared of, but it wasn’t this. 

‘I should go,’ Carmilla mutters, grabbing her bag off the bed. 

‘No,’ she says. Carmilla turns to face her, and she looks so shattered, and so tortured. ‘I don’t want you to leave.’

Carmilla chokes out a horrible sort of noise, like a laugh gone wrong.  
‘Are you insane?’

‘Look, I’m not saying I’m not mad at you, because I am.’ Laura pauses, swallows through the lump in her throat. ‘But just because I’m mad doesn’t mean I automatically give up on you, okay. I’m not going to kick you out, that isn’t how this works.’

Carmilla sinks down on the edge of her bed, and she is so pale that Laura has to swallow again to keep herself from crying.

‘Are you okay?’ she asks, and it’s the most gentle thing either of them has said since she walked through the door.

‘I’m fine,’ Carmilla mumbles. Laura shakes her head.

‘You don’t look fine.’ 

Carmilla doesn’t respond, so she walks over to the mini-fridge and pours a glass of blood. When she gives the glass to Carmilla, she looks at it like Laura has just handed her a glass of live mice, or one of Danny’s gross green smoothies. 

‘Drink,’ Laura tells her. She drinks.

‘Thanks.’

‘Yeah, well. You did a really cr- _bad_ thing, don’t think I’ve forgotten,’ Laura says. But Carmilla’s cheeks look a shade pinker already, and she can’t bring herself to be anything much except relieved.

‘I don’t get why you aren’t yelling at me right now,’ Carmilla mutters, eyes firmly in her lap. 

Laura sighs, and sits down on the bed next to her.

‘Hey, look at me.’ Carmilla lifts her eyes to meet Laura’s. ‘Just because I’m mad at you, doesn’t mean I stop caring about you.’

Laura sighs, lifts a hand to cup Carmilla’s cheek. 

‘I love you, okay? We’ll work it out.’

Carmilla doesn’t say anything, but when Laura meets her eyes, they look a little less empty.

 

3.

It’s almost an afterthought.

She’s in a rush to get to class, running late because she forgot to do again so she had to root through the bottom of the wardrobe to find something to wear.

She grabs her bag, and she’s halfway to the door before she thinks better of it.

She backtracks to lean over Carmilla’s bed and dig through her blankets to find the creamy slope of her jaw. She presses a light kiss there. 

‘Love you,’ she says, voice quiet because her mouth is only inches from Carmilla’s ear.

As she straightens up and turns to leave, she hears Carmilla mumble something, not quite clear enough to hear the words. 

Laura doesn’t have to understand the syllables to know what they mean. 

She walks to class with a grin on her face, and never notices that in her rush to leave, she only put on one glove. 

 

4.

It used to be, when Laura woke up in the middle of the night, Carmilla wasn’t there. These days, she most often is. 

She’ll be sitting on her bed, reading Camus by candlelight, and Laura will roll her eyes at the stereotype. 

Or she’ll be looking at the stars, or just lying next to Laura in the dark, eyes wide open. Laura doesn’t question it, knows some things aren’t meant to be asked. 

She wakes up from a dream that she forgets almost as soon as she opens her eyes. Or at least, her mind forgets it. Her body is slower to catch up.

Carmilla is curled up beside her, and it’s fifty-fifty if she’s been there for hours, or if it was Laura’s racing heartbeat that put her there.

‘You okay?’ she whispers.

Laura nods, but she’s still shaking a little.

‘You’re beautiful,’ Carmilla says, quiet enough that the words are more breath than anything else.

‘You’ve been watching the stars again,’ Laura says. She can tell, just tell. 

Carmilla smiles and Laura can feel her racing heart slowing to fit Carmilla’s languid mood. It scares her sometimes, how tuned they are to one another. 

‘They’re nearly as beautiful as you,’ Carmilla tells her. Laura gives her a tiny giggle.

‘You are such a sappy idiot.’

Carmilla hums. 

The silence stretches, warm and dark.

And then Carmilla tucks her chin to her chest and says, ‘I’m in love with you.’ 

‘Yeah,’ Laura says. ‘Me too.’

 

5.

Carmilla goes round to the Summer Society halls, with a promise to Laura that she is going to apologise to Danny, tell her the truth about everything that she said. 

And another promise that she won’t kill anyone.

She’s gone for two hours, by which time Laura has chewed all ten of her fingernails down to nothing and contemplated calling the police at least three different times.

As soon as Carmilla walks through the door, Laura is up and asking questions.

‘How’d it go? Are you okay? Is Danny okay? What took so long?’

‘Woah, calm down buttercup,’ Carmilla says, and she’s smiling, although it maybe isn’t as bright as Laura knows it could be.

‘Well?’ She demands.

‘It went fine. I said sorry and explained myself, and then she had a go at me. Neither of us bit anyone.’ She’s got a sarcastic smirk going on, but Laura can’t even be annoyed.

‘That’s good!’ 

‘Yeah, well, don’t expect us to be best buds or anything,’ Carmilla laughs.

Laura rolls her eyes.

‘You’re both idiots.’ 

‘If I’m an idiot, what does that make you?’ Carmilla quirks an eyebrow.

Laura tips her head to the side to consider.

‘In love with an idiot,’ she grins.

 

(She and Danny get pie after class on Wednesday, and Laura practically skips on the way back to the room.

And yes, maybe she detects a slight pout to Carmilla’s lips when she walks in, but she doesn’t complain when Laura rambles for a half hour about how lovely it was. 

She can live with that, she thinks.)

 

 

+1.

Laura decides she hates the word forever.

She tells this to Carmilla as they are tangled together on Laura’s bed. Carmilla reading _Madame Bovary_ , Laura thinking.

‘It’s a stupid word,’ she tells Carmilla, who has let her book fall to the side to listen to her. ‘It means something different from what we think.’

Carmilla makes a soft noise of agreement.

Laura shifts, so that she can turn and press her nose into the crook of Carmilla’s elbow.

‘I hate that forever means something different for you than it does for me,’ Laura says, and it sounds thick even to her own ears.

Carmilla must hear it too, because she twines cool fingers into Laura’s hair and murmurs, ‘Hey. Laura.’

She lifts head at that.

‘I love you.’ 

Every other time Carmilla has said those words to her, it has been gentle. This time, it is fierce. It sounds like a promise and a threat rolled into one.

‘I love you, so much,’ Laura tells her, and it comes out like a sob- or a story. So, so full, brimming with something she can’t even describe. 

 

(Forever will never be a word she loves. 

She learns to live with that.)


End file.
